We won’t give you Clément’s full résumé as a skater, but we can easily say he’s a seasoned guy of the French scene, who still delivers on the wheels, but also likes to film, edit ( see for instance Sean’s 3, in our related article here… ) and travel.

He actually just finished the edit you can watch end of this article, filmed during his peregrinations throughout the American continent last year.We took this opportunity, thanks to Louis Vilar, to ask him a few questions, illustrated with a few pictures Clément kept for us.

LR: Hey bro, where did this trip take you, which are the lands you roamed ?

Clément: To keep it simple, I took a sabbatical year out of work, and went on the road for 10 months. Strangers became friends, and friends became brothers. We first went to New-York, after a few weeks in Paris (Thanks to the brothers there!), then a quick stop in Dominican Republic, before Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. On the way home I pit stopped in London, and then wandered a bit in south of France and Cantal before heading back to Lyon to get back my life.

Man can see a lot of different heads in the video, but who did you just come across, who came to see you, who hosted you ?

Indeed there’s a lot of people in the video. First, I have to thank Martin Legrand (yes, Victor’s brother) who took us away from real shit in NYC, after some last minute housing issues. We (Raphaëlle & me) could squat his place time to find a room in a shared flat, otherwise we would have spend our travel budget in AirBnB and hotel rooms in NYC. Victor Legrand, Pierre Adrien and Christophe Brumby came to visit NYC during our stay, I also contacted Augusto Castillo to session.

We hence skated together and I got to meet local skaters : Edwin Omar, Mike Torres, Sean Grossman, all the dudes you can see in the Caprice video ( Sean Grossman ) and many others I don’t remember the names ( sorry ). We also spent an afternoon at the pickles festival with Shawn Engler (Rejects) drinking whiskey shots and beers.

Then my brother Thibault Barbaza gently hosted me for a week at the Punta Cana Club Med, for a crazy free full board week. Thanks to the G.O’s !

I escaped from there to Sao Paulo, where I sessioned alone a few times before I could catch-up with Kalléo Hipolito and his friends, whom I spent a really good day with ( thanks again guys ! )

Then I joined Samuel “Bodchoy” Courdent in Buenos Aires, and we wandered together for a solid month from Bariloche to Ushuaia (Patagonia, Argentina).

Once Bodchoy flew back to Lille, I took a trip to Potrerillos, next to Mendoza to meet back with the Seufferheld family (Jona/Seba/Javi). The place they live in is just incredible ! It’s a small house in the middle of the mountains, ( Andes, next to the Chilean border ) with a lake just a few miles away. We would stay 4/5 days in Potrerillos, doing construction work and hiking on Incas’s steps, and then would spend 4/5 days in Mendoza where Mariano Villar would host us to skate and party. I had the chance to meet Mendoza’s blading scene, quite active I got to say, with youngers and elders. Agustin ( Jona and Seba’s cousin ) is part of it, a really crazy guy who got compared during a drunken night to Brian Aragon by a local legend (FER)

He’d rather make me think of Brandon Campbell during his rollerbooze period. Anyway, that’s heavy.

Christophe Brumby (Lyon/London) joined me in Mendoza, and we hit the road together through Chile, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. We came across Bina and Sumiko in La Paz, Bolivia’s capital city, where we skated the highest skatepark in the world, over 4000 meters altitude; a Vans skatepark I believe, DIY style. Kind of strange for a city with barely any skateboarder or blader to have such a big and crazy skatepark.

In Lima, Peru, we randomly met Sandro Timoteo, a Peruvian blading legend discovered in the video United Front by Jan Welch, released in 2000.

In England I spent some time with the casual team, Vasco Moyal, Umberto Toselli, Neil Ingall, Martin, Remi Lamarq, James Bower, Axel Gillot, as every time I’m in London we spend some good time together. To end up this year, after a quick stop in Lyon, I went for a south of France road trip, between Perpignan and Nice to catch-up with all the homies, Cédric, Clément Laguigne, Jey Mcfly, Nicolas Auroux, Sylvain Bicini, Samuel Boghanim, Sonny Pichon, Etienne Camus, Jimmy Dubost, Kevin Péchuzal, etc.. I’m just talking here about people more or less connected to rollerblading, but there’s also all those I met in youth hostels, parties, buses, excursions, treks or 4×4 trips in the Bolivian desert.

Did your bring back crazy stores ? As just by skating in your own neighborhood, man can witness magical scenes, so I assume it has to be even crazier on the other side of the planet ?

Well it’s true something always happens during sessions, but aside from a few argues with angered locals or by-passers, when Spanish insults would fly, most of skate sessions were peaceful. It was off skates things would get crazy.

Like on the Isla des Sol, on the Titicaca lake, we ate in a no electricity restaurant, lit by candles, where the chef was cooking with a gas cooker and doing the table service at the same time. We waited for a while (2h) before we got served, but it was worth the wait.

In the video you can see Agustin holding a big firecracker. He threw it on a bar terrace, a bar he didn’t like for some inexplicable reason. A second one was used by these good old anti-capitalists to blow a Mac Donalds sign.

In a bus in Bolivia, after a 5 or 6 hours drive, the bus stops and the driver asks use to get down, take all our luggage and walk. It’s 2 in the morning, on a tiny road in the middle of nowhere, no light, no explanations. Nobody understood what was going on. Knife in hand, we followed the movement, for like an hour, before we arrived to another bus. We learned later that a strike was blocking all the roads, and that it was the only mean to keep on our journey.

In a bus again but in Brazil this time, we were going to Rio with Raphaëlle, and the man behind the wheel was behaving like a rally driver, but on the highway with an overcrowded bus. We were really scared, especially when a car overtook and forced him to stop. A guy came off the car, wanting to fight with the driver. It’s only in such places you can witness such things, a man willing to battle with a bus driver in the middle of an highway.

As you imagine, this is just a small portion of what went on, we necessarily had a few encounters with police in Chile or NYC, some parties ending early morning, one of which we ended up sleeping in a park, some interminable treks on foot under a blazing sun, hitch-hiking, beautiful landscapes and amazing encounters.

If you’ve been skating long enough, you most probably know tricks ain’t the most important part of it.

Goal of this video was to transcript the good times we had on skates during this year which was the best of my life. Skating and good spirit between homies on the other side of the ocean. It’s my way to salute all the people I met along the trip.